


the future is from here on out

by ednae



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Confessions, M/M, Multi, White Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 02:04:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18111035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ednae/pseuds/ednae
Summary: This whole thing is stupid; he’s not even sure how he let Touma convince him this was a good idea. He’s even more not sure how he let Toumafind outabout his—his—his crush.How embarrassing.





	the future is from here on out

**Author's Note:**

> this is a birthday present to myself bc i love haruka with my entire heart and i want him to be happy with his 2 cute boyfriends

Haruka fidgets at his desk, fingers running over the small heart-shaped box in his hands. This whole thing is stupid; he’s not even sure how he let Touma convince him this was a good idea. He’s even more not sure how he let Touma _find out_ about his—

his—

his crush.

That’s what it is, isn’t it? Even just thinking the word makes Haruka nauseous, his stomach turning over and roiling as he tries to keep down the breakfast Torao made for him this morning.

The feelings are strange, new, and totally unwanted. The butterflies fluttering in his stomach, the heat flooding his cheeks, the heartbeat pounding in his chest, all of it. It makes him feel like a little kid, which is the exact _opposite_ of what he wants to convince everyone he is.

And then stupid Touma had the nerve to go and laugh about it with Minami, calling him cute and ruffling his hair like he was their pet dog.

But, well, Touma seemed pretty genuine about his advice, even though Haruka never actually asked him for any. He hadn’t even meant to let it slip that he liked someone—someones.

So now he’s sitting here with this dumb little box in his hand, on White Day, waiting for some stroke of courage to go up and give it to them.

Maybe he should just stash the box back in his bag, take it home, and empty the contents into his mouth later instead.

He catches movement out of the corner of his eye and his breath hitches as Tamaki passes by his desk. Iori follows closely behind him, probably to get something to drink from a vending machine now that lunch hour has arrived. Haruka has to fight to stay seated instead of doing the incredibly impulsive thing of jumping out of his chair and shoving the box at them. That… would not help his case.

But.

But if he follows them, then he won’t have to give them the chocolates in front of the whole class. He can at least spare himself a little bit of the humiliation, right? Touma didn’t say he _had_ to do it in front of everyone.

Haruka groans and all but slams his face onto his desk, rubbing his nose into the fake wood. This whole thing is a mess. He doesn’t want _feelings._ And he certainly doesn’t want feelings for two members of a rival idol group.

No one’s ever gonna take him seriously ever again.

With that resignation, he finds his resolve and pushes himself up from his desk, careful to avoid lunging forward like his nerves goad him to, and quickly stuffs the small box inside his uniform sweater to hide it from prying eyes, holding his arm close to his side to keep it from falling out. Then, with two deep breaths, one for each boy he’s about to confront, he leaves the classroom.

Iori and Tamaki didn’t even get that far. The vending machine is just outside the room, maybe twenty feet down the hall. It doesn’t give Haruka much time at all to think of a plan, and he’s too far into it to back out now. If they even glance his way they’ll see him, and then it’ll be all over.

His feet continue forward.

Tamaki notices him first. Of course he does, because even though he’s a dumbass he’s weirdly perceptive and notices everything around him, even though he ignores most of it—unless the thing is pudding, that is.

“Isumin!” he calls out, waving his entire arm high above his head. There’s a goofy grin plastered on his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and Haruka swallows.

Iori is shocked out of his concentration, jumping just a little before turning toward Haruka, and then his face softens into a tiny smile, something warm and pleasant in a way only Iori can muster. His bangs are mussed, and Haruka recalls him running his hands through his hair earlier during a test.

Both of them welcome him without question, even though he’s their rival—their enemy. Even though he’s done terrible things, to them and to their friends. It’s been like that since the beginning, them pushing him and prodding him until he opens up and gives in to their ridiculous demands for friendship, no matter how nonsensical they are.

The warmth in Haruka’s chest makes him feel like he’s melting, his hard exterior crumbling around him until nothing is left except his soft, vulnerable feelings.

He hates that he doesn’t hate that.

“Are you getting something, Isumi-san?” Iori asks, tilting his head toward the vending machine. Tamaki presses his face up against the glass, watching intently as a bottle of King Pudding is pushed out and falls into the dispenser. He shouts out in victory when it lands with a dull thud, then drops to the ground and reaches his hand into the machine to grab it. All the while, his face is lit up with anticipation for his snack.

Haruka clears his throat. “No…”

He doesn’t elaborate, his throat already closed up again. Iori raises an eyebrow. “Are you… feeling okay?”

“Should we take you to the nurse?” Tamaki offers. He takes a step closer, bends down so he’s closer to Haruka’s height, and squints his eyes like he’s inspecting him.

“I’m fine!” Haruka shakes his head furiously, feeling the box of chocolates press uncomfortably into his side. The longer he waits, the more obvious the box feels, digging into his skin like the sharp knife Tamaki once mentioned off-handedly that Sougo threatened him with.

Tamaki’s nose wrinkles up. “Do you need more life?” he asks, shifting his pudding and tiny plastic spoon to one hand and already digging into his pants pocket for his phone. “I’ll send you some.”

“It’s not that!” Haruka shouts. He can feel his face burning and his heart pounding against his rib cage. If they would just shut up for one minute this would be easier!

“Then what is it?” Iori’s voice is gentle even as it pries for more information. “If you don’t tell us, we can’t help you.”

“It’s—” Haruka looks away, presses his hand into his hip where the box rests just beneath a couple layers of fabric. “It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

“This is stupid,” Haruka mumbles under his breath. He clenches his fist, half of him ready to turn around and stomp his way back into the classroom. Of course he can’t do it. Touma’s advice was dumb anyway, mega dumb. Ultra dumb. The dumbest in the entire world.

“Oh!” Tamaki suddenly exclaims, his eyes widening as he brings a hand to his face. “It’s White Day!”

Haruka can’t breathe. Did they really figure him out? Tamaki and Iori, who infamously share one single brain cell between them, saw through him in a matter of moments?

“That’s right, Yotsuba-san,” Iori commends, his voice flat. “Did you just figure that out now?”

“I forgot, shut up.” Tamaki sticks his tongue out at him before bringing a hefty spoonful of pudding to his mouth. He waits a moment before continuing. “I’ll buy you something, since you and Mikki made us chocolate for Valentine’s day.”

It’s Iori’s turn to blush, his cheeks brightening with a soft pink just barely hidden by his hair. “You have it wrong; I barely helped. Nii-san did most of the baking.”

Tamaki waves his hand to dismiss him. “Your face was bright red when you gave me my chocolate last month, and Mikki said you were the one who put all the King Pudding faces on them, so you can’t make me believe you.”

Iori coughs into his hand.

With Iori as flustered as he is now, Haruka feels less singled out. He can breathe a little easier, and while they’re distracted he thinks that maybe he could actually give them the box of chocolates instead of just watching them go back and forth being dumb and silly and cute like that.

They are cute, Haruka admits with a painful twist in his stomach. The way Iori can totally break down if you poke just the right buttons, the way Tamaki’s smiles light up the entire room. The gentle, subtle affection Iori likes to show. The over-the-top, shameless gestures Tamaki uses to show he cares.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring until Tamaki is looking back at him. He blinks, clearing his vision of the rosy hues and coming back to reality.

“Isumin,” Tamaki drawls, slouching over as he pouts. “You were ignoring me.”

“I was not,” Haruka counters.

Tamaki’s lips poke out and he blows a raspberry as if it were a suitable response. “I asked if you were giving anyone presents today.”

Haruka jumps. “Eh?”

His arms fly out in front of him as if he can put physical distance between himself and that question. But as soon as he lifts his arm the box of chocolates slides right out from under his sweater, crashing to the floor.

The box splits open, the little store-bought chocolate squares splattering out across the tile, expanding outward from a single point like a firework.

Everything is quiet for a moment. All three of them stare down at the chocolates littering the hallway, not sure how to process what happened.

Then Tamaki, lacking any sense of tact, points down at the box. “Are those the limited edition King Pudding chocolates?”

King Pudding’s face is staring up at them, fancy lettering overlapping his chunky body. the box is dented along the edges now, causing the mascot’s normally blank expression to flip up in a twisted smile, as if it’s mocking him.

“Isumi-san,” Iori starts. “What are these chocolates for?”

Haruka vows to throttle the life out of Touma when he gets back from school. “It’s, uh.”

Tamaki crouches down to the floor, reaching for one of the chocolates that have managed to stay in the box.

“Yotsuba-san, please do not.” Iori nudges Tamaki’s shoulder and sends him a very pointed look, a mixture between concern, reprimand, and exasperation.

“But I didn’t even pick one of the ones off the floor!”

Haruka bites his lip. “Are you saying you’d eat the chocolates off the floor…?”

“Five second rule.”

Iori sighs, long and loud, and then gently goads Tamaki to stand back up. “You don’t even know who they’re for, so don’t eat them.”

“But it’s King Pudding,” Tamaki says, as if that’s enough of a reason for him to go eating floor chocolates that haven’t been properly gifted to him yet.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Iori chides. He drops his voice low. “They are cute, though.”

“Then Isumin, can I have these?” Tamaki asks, gesturing at the chocolates. “It’s fine, right? Since the box broke.”

“Yotsuba-san!”

Tamaki holds up a hand directly in Iori’s face. “I’m not asking you, Iorin.”

Iori physically takes a step back, his eyes crossed as he stares at the hand in front of him. “You can’t just—”

“Fine, fine!” Tamaki gives in with a slump of his shoulders. “Who are they for?”

It isn’t a question Haruka wants to answer, not when his face is still burning and his pulse is louder than Iori’s and even Tamaki’s voices. “They’re—I wanted to, um.”

His voice cuts off, and he knows he’s dragging this out way too long, but he just can’t seem to make himself say it.

Iori pushes Tamaki’s hand away and leans in, clearly interested in the answer even though he tries to cover it up with a hastily thrown together expression of disinterest. Tamaki’s face, though, is brimming with anticipation, though perhaps it has more to do with the fact that he wants those chocolates even if they’ve been on the floor for much longer than five seconds by now.

The longer they stare at him, the more Haruka panics. “It’s—! You guys are stupid, you know?”

“Eh?” Iori’s posture slackens and he blinks, clearly not expecting this. To be fair, though, Haruka wasn’t expecting it either.

“I mean, come on!” Haruka scoffs, waving his hand in the air. “How are you two so dumb that you can’t even tell when someone got chocolate for you?”

“For us?” Tamaki looks down at Iori, who meets his gaze with an equally confused expression.

Iori turns back to Haruka. “Both of us?”

“Well, duh! You two are like a packaged deal, right? Can’t have one without the other, like you’re glued to each other’s sides or some other mushy gushy shit like that.” Oh, no. This isn’t coming out right at all. But the words keep coming, and Haruka can’t think of anything to replace them. “So I thought, hey, I’ll get them both chocolates and that’ll be fine.”

“Obligatory chocolate?” Iori asks, eyebrows knitting together. He speaks hesitantly, like he’s not sure he even wants an answer.

Haruka barks out a laugh again, realizing how nasty he sounds but powerless to curb the defense mechanism. It’s fine, though. He didn’t expect anything to come out of this anyway, so he’ll just go home and sulk for a couple hours before Torao slings him over his shoulder and drags him out of his room in some obnoxious, insensitive way of cheering him up.

“Why would I feel obligated to give you chocolates?” Haruka asks, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “It’s not like you two have ever done anything for me except confuse the hell out of me!”

“Iorin uses a lot of big words, yeah.” Tamaki nods like he understands what Haruka’s saying and agrees. “It’s hard to keep up with him sometimes.”

“Yotsuba-san!” Iori protests, rounding on Tamaki in an instant. “You’re just as confusing, you know. You barely make sense half the time.”

Haruka’s chest is burning with his face and the longer he watches them the more he wants to throw up, or maybe throw his arms around them, or both. “See! That’s what I mean!”

Tamaki and Iori fall silent and slowly shift their gazes to him.

Haruka babbles on because his brain is totally broken and he has no control over himself anymore. “You’re annoying and you never shut up but then you act all nice and friendly and you won’t leave me alone and you’re so cute and _stupid_ and I can’t stand it!”

For good measure, he folds his arms over his chest and huffs, looking away. He hopes his hair covers up his face enough so they can’t see it.

“Cute?” Iori repeats, dumbfounded.

Haruka’s heart stops. “Ah—uh. Well yeah! You’re idols, after all. Of course you’re cute.”

“He called us cute!” Tamaki whispers excitedly into Iori’s ear, bristling with pride.

“I heard him,” Iori says, pushing gently at Tamaki’s chest to give himself some space. But he has a faint dusting of pink on his cheeks and his voice cracks ever so slightly and Haruka wonders if Iori knows that he’s not fooling anyone.

But that’s part of the reason why Haruka likes him, after all, even if he can’t say it out loud or even just barely admit it to himself.

“Emphasis on the stupid part, though,” Haruka sneers because he can’t let anyone know he might have feelings. That would be terrible, of course.

Iori just sighs and rolls his eyes. “Isumi-san, why did you get us chocolates?”

Direct and to the point, just like always, even when Haruka would rather dance around the topic until they give up or get so caught up in their own banter that they forget he’s still standing in front of them. “It’s… for you. Both of you. Because I, well, Touma said I should do this when I talked to him.”

“Talked to him about what…?” Iori prods, gesturing for him to continue.

This is so embarrassing. He doesn’t want to do this. He wants to do it, but he doesn’t want to at the same time. He’s not even sure if that makes sense. His throat is dry and he can’t stop thinking about every mean thing he’s ever said to them or IDOLiSH7 and he wants to turn around and run away and never look back, even if that very thought makes his heart hurt a thousand times worse than the thought of actually confessing to them.

“I like you,” he says finally, and it feels so anticlimactic considering the buildup.

“We like you too, Isumin!” Tamaki says, stepping forward to pat him on the back. “That’s why we eat together on Fridays, right?”

“We eat together on Fridays because you sat on my desk until I agreed,” Haruka corrects him. “And I’m not even talking about that!”

“Ah,” Iori says, eyes widening with realization. He’s figured it out. “Yotsuba-san.” He tugs on Tamaki’s arm and pulls him back, a tiny shake of his head warning him to stop in his tracks.

“Huh? What is it?” Tamaki looks at Iori, then at Haruka, then back at Iori, searching for an answer despite their silence.

“Wh–whatever, it’s fine,” Haruka says, puffing out his cheeks. “You don’t have to give me an answer or anything, and you don’t have to return my feelings. This whole thing was stupid anyway. It wasn’t my idea after all. I would have come up with something much better.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets and kicks one of the floor chocolates toward the wall, then spins around to go back to the classroom. He did what he came out here to do, after all. He has nothing left to say.

“Wait!” Tamaki calls out suddenly, stopping Haruka in his tracks as if a physical barrier has been placed in front of him. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but he finds his stomach fluttering anyway. “Do you mean… you know, _that_ kind of like?”

Iori sucks in a breath behind him. “Yes, Yotsuba-san, he means that kind of like.”

“Isumin _likes_ us?” Tamaki nearly shouts, so loudly that Haruka instantly begins praying for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. “Both of us?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Are you going to keep talking about me like I’m not here?” Haruka grumbles under his breath, still not willing to turn back around to face them. It’s easier to pretend they’re in their underwear if he’s not looking at them, and Torao said that it’s easier to talk to people if you imagine them in their underwear.

“Sorry,” Iori says, taking a step closer toward Haruka. His footfall is heavy on the tile even though he’s careful to avoid the chocolates. “We should consider your feelings properly.”

Harukas shoots up ramrod straight and spins around. “No! That’s not necessary! Just forget it, okay? I wasn’t even gonna tell you anyway until stupid Touma got in my head.”

“Hey, Isumin,” Tamaki interrupts, totally ignoring everything Haruka said. “What do you like about us, anyway?”

In some ways, Tamaki’s innocent questions are harder to handle than Iori’s probing ones. He taps his fingers together and stares at the ground. “You… you’re my only friends here, even when I was mean to you… I know it’s dumb, but—but.”

“I see.” Iori hums, and Haruka peeks out through his bangs to watch as he pushes himself onto his toes and whispers something in Tamaki’s ear. When Tamaki nods, Iori straightens, looking satisfied with whatever just happened. “Isumi-san.”

“Y–yeah…?” Hakura’s lips pull back into a wary grimace, not entirely sure what to anticipate from this development.

Iori smiles, soft and kind and open in a way that makes Haruka’s heart positively explode. “Would you like to go to an arcade with us after school?”

“Huh?” Haruka feels like he’s falling. He’s not yet sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, or what it even means for him right now. “Like a… like a date?”

Tamaki nods with so much force that his hair flies in all directions even with it clipped back. “Come on, it’ll be fun! We can get snacks afterwards.”

“It’s a start,” Iori explains, extending his hand, palm up, into the space between them. “And we would have to start somewhere regardless of our answers. So, will you join us?”

Haruka hesitates, not sure what exactly is going on. It doesn’t feel like a rejection, which only serves to make him more confused. But he finds his arm lifting, his hand fitting into Iori’s, before he can properly process anything. “Yeah, sure…”

Tamaki puts his own hand on top, engulfing both of theirs with its size, and wraps his fingers around them as if they’re holding hands, albeit awkwardly and unnaturally. Haruka’s brain short circuits.

“Then, it’s a date!” Tamaki cheers, swinging their joined hands as much as he can.

“It’s a date,” Iori confirms with a nod.

Haruka hesitates, not sure he’s even allowed to join in despite all the signs indicating otherwise. “It’s… a date.”

He’s in way over his head with them, he thinks, because no matter how much he may like them, they’re still damn confusing.

But maybe that’s exactly what he likes about them.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/polythagoras) where i cry every day about isumi haruka


End file.
